Stripped of its real-world foundation, quite frankly the least shocking thing in Mirka Andolfo's "Unnatural," the 12-issue Italian maxiseries that will soon see an English translation, is that a comely pig named Leslie would harbor a deep, socially-forbidden lust for a wolf who may not exist, and it's pure dystopian fantasy to think that that the only thing between Leslie and making her pillow-clutching dreams and bathtub fantasies a reality is a government that cannily discriminates against interspecies and same-sex relationships. But considering Leslie's world is not all that dissimilar from our own (aside from all the lusty talking animals, of course), "Unnatural" becomes a sharpened knife of allegory, one that jabs at the prejudices that plague a human world slow to change and even slower to understand what appears to be unordinary or (to put it more on the nose) unnatural in love.

"Unnatural" #1, interior

Leslie is, again, a rather buxom pig in an anthropomorphic world of goats, mice and other animals. She has a job (where her crocodile boss comes with a thirsty male gaze) and all is more or less well -- except she's turning 25 and that means inclusion in the government's "Reproduction Program Office," a state institution that promises to match individuals (so long as they are the same species and opposite gender) for the purposes of procreation.

And while that's the Orwellian apex of "Unnatural" #1, the moment that spoke to me the most -- the instant that signaled how insightful this series might be -- is where Andolfo goes into the government's tax polices as Leslie laments how her taxes as a single person are 25 percent higher and a gay coworker worries about how he and his boyfriend could be taxed so much "we'll be out on the street." Fascism comes in leather boots and the cold steel and aluminum of guns and sharply-pressed uniforms, yes, but it can also come in oppressive bureaucracy -- and if the power to tax is indeed the power to destroy (your third SCOTUS reference, by the way), then Andolfo has created a world in which the government can extinguish the most private and meaningful of relationships all in the name of promoting the "right" sort of coupling.

In addressing the politics of emotionally intimate and sexual relationships, it is difficult to divorce the physical romance from it all, and Andolfo confronts that issue directly -- i.e. this is decidedly not an all-ages book. But the steamy bits never feel superfluous, and Andolfo crafts it was a careful cinematographer's eye for drawing out the eroticism and making it all the more meaningful.

"Unnatural" is a funny and sexy and smart and so many more things. But, most of all, it is a damning indictment of who we have been and who we continue to be as a society. It also shows that while "love is love" is not a winning legal argument, it is, even when animals are concerned, the most human one.

CROWDED #1. Written and designed by Christopher Sebela. Pencils by Ro Stein. Inks by Ted Brandt. Colored by Triona Farrell. Lettered by Cardinal Rae. Edited by Juliette Capra.

The recent unemployment numbers seem to cast the U.S. economy in a rosy (green?) haze, right? It's been years since by AP Econ exam, but 3.8 seems like a good number when we're talking a percentage of people who are looking for work. But the economy -- on a micro, individual level -- doesn't feel right, does it? We all seem to be overworked and underpaid, a generation of freelancers living from job to job in a "gig" economy, a cute way of labeling a financial life with no security or stability whatsoever.

To some extent, the gig economy is enabled by the litany of apps like Uber and Fiverr, services designed to make life quick and convenient for users by encourage a hellish "existence" for those unfortunate enough to be on the backend. I used Fiverr for a graphic designer once, and the whole process gave me an ick. It was designed to find someone with the skills I needed -- skills they honed -- but with marketplace conditions that encouraged a race to the bottom in terms of pay.

Blessedly, writer Christopher Sebela (himself a freelancer) is here to give the gig economy the ass kicking it deserves with "Crowded," a new series about a woman who stumbles into a crowd-funded assassination campaign (Get it? Crowd. Dead. That still makes me chuckle.) and then must app-source her bodyguard. It is breezy and spunky, filled with bullets and a strange (but welcomed) sensation that series protagonist Charlotte Ellison is not being entirely honest with us or her protector, Vita.

Charlotte claims that she doesn't know why she's become the target for a murder-for-hire, the center of a campaign that rivals one aimed at a "senator who drafted a bill cutting the arts budget," as Sebela wryly observes through Vita what really becomes popular online. But sure enough, we're not given any indication what Charlotte -- a gig grinder herself as a housesitting, dog-walking, ride-sharing microlender -- did to deserve infamy with a million-dollar reward on her head, but that just gives us something to look forward to, now doesn't it?

Sebela's work is sharp, sure, but the art is also fantastic. Ro Stein's pencils -- especially in facial expressions -- are great, and Ted Brandt is super with the inks. My favorite artistic touch, however, comes with the union of colorist Triona Farrell and letterist Cardinal Raw. Using a shaded and character specific box for an internal monologue is a common (I guess?) practice in Big Two capes-and-tights books, but I don't remember the last time I saw it in a creator-owned work. Here, Charlotte's (pink) and Vita's (yellow) thoughts are always easy to see and follow -- and I'm not distracted by my walnut brain's inability to remember which character I'm supposed to be processing.

"Crowded" is a manic ride through an app-based economy and one woman's literal struggle to survive.